Factory of Strategy: Thirty-Three Lessons on Lenin

In the last conversation we distanced ourselves from a series of Leninist assumptions on the theory of organization, especially concerning the relation between the theory and form of organization and determinate class composition in Lenin’s period and in ours, which demanded that we distance ourselves with the banal but true recognition that it is unimaginable to return to the theory of the party in the current class composition and to repeat in a pedestrian fashion Leninist theory. It follows from this that it is impossible to recuperate Lenin’s strategy of the revolutionary process because all the conditions, both objective and subjective, and the contents of the revolutionary shift as it can be defined today from within the struggles and needs of workers have deeply changed. But we need to pay careful attention to the debates of the past few years on this, because the positions that are critical of Lenin already and immediately return to revisionist plans and end up consolidating positions of reflux, which is a complete misunderstanding of the objective of workers’ struggles and a pure and simple opportunism. Contrary to these positions, we believe that reading Lenin while questioning his thought and criticizing it when necessary can be expedient as a way of recovering a solid ground for revolutionary action. Having distanced ourselves from Lenin, we can now verify some of the elements that are valid as determinations of a continuous weaving of revolutionary practice, or, if you prefer, of a theory of revolution as science rather than ideology; we can verify the extent to which recalling Lenin can configure a point of reference for working-class theory.

Now, a fundamental moment in Lenin’s thought needs to be underlined and recuperated: this concerns the (wholly correct, in terms of Marxian theory) relation between composition, strategy of revolution, and party organization. But the dialectics Lenin establishes between these moments is entirely resolved in the ability to subvert the objective conditions within which revolutionary practice unfolds, and to turn them into subjective conditions of the party, in the will of the party, to grasp determinate conditions and operate on them. Therefore, Leninism does not consist in raising the “question of the state”; Leninism is raising the “question of the withering-away of the state” in a definite context, according to workers’ needs when these are embodied in the comportments of the masses and have become their practice. Leninism is the ability of the party (or in other words, of the subjective will that has become collective brain) to seize these needs and turn them, by means of adequate organizational tools, from the impotence of demands to the power of a confrontation, a subversion and an attack on the structures of the state, on the practice of the exercise of power. This will of subversion and power is what characterizes, effectively, Leninism and turns it into a permanent category, a discriminator between who is revolutionary and who is not.

I believe that, taking this fundamental character of Leninism as a point of departure, and seeing how it has penetrated into the masses, we can revaluate a set of questions, though they pertain, in Leninism, to a particular class composition. Let us see how. For instance, let us look into the discourse on insurrection as an art: this is, perhaps, one of the most provoking aspects, if you like, or one that at least seems to be the most related to the particular position of the party in relation to the masses in a situation where there is very little homogeneity among the various strata of the proletariat and where the possibility of immediately ascribing communist contents to the struggle is the furthest. Because of this, the action of the party needs to be seen as the action from below of a subjective vanguard that mediates, in itself before the masses, the continuity of the revolutionary process and thus demands to be delegated to represent the masses. Insurrection as art is the ability to grasp the opportune moment when the subjective will of the party can be made to react, and this moment, rather than deriving from the strength of class struggle, is determined by composite factors that are contradictory and, in any case, out of the direct control of the working class. We criticized this notion from our perspective, one that sees a renewal of the revolutionary process when confronted with a higher degree of class homogeneity and a series of comportments that do not allow for representations of working-class interest, a situation where the working class creates a block on itself and directly builds the conditions and contradictions of capitalist development rather than simply using them. However, beyond this and the fact that this new standpoint on insurrection eliminates the “transcendence” of the party in relation to the organisms and movements of the masses (even when, in the case of the Soviet, they configure instances of power), we could still read, in Lenin, the strong tendency toward a situation where this insurrectional movement subverts this relation of representation and decision, composition and organization: in Lenin, we find a faith in the prospect that the moment of insurrection can see organization (as subjective will), affect the objective comportments of the masses, and change them, while identifying with them. The inversion of the relation between composition and organization thus turns upside down the meaning of the theory of the party, and “tends to” anticipate Marx’s forecasting of the maturity of communism and of the masses for communism. This hope exalts the Leninist notion of insurrection as an “art,” and elides its irrationalist character while materially filling it with subjective impetus. If we read Lenin’s Marxism and Insurrection, we find, on the one hand, the greatest example of the discourse on insurrection as art (bearing in mind that it was written in September 1917, between the first and the second phase of the revolution), a letter to the central committee of the Russian social democratic workers’ party written at a time when Lenin was forced into hiding, an extremely acute moment of struggle faced with an attempt of reactionary forces to recuperate it. On the other hand, the very incidence of the concept of insurrection on the relation between composition and organization makes it possible to conceive of an inversion of this very relation:

Marxists are accused of Blanquism for treating insurrection as an art! Can there be a more flagrant perversion of the truth, when not a single Marxist will deny that it was Marx who expressed himself on this score in the most definite, precise and categorical manner, referring to insurrection specifically as an art, saying that it must be treated as an art, that you must win the first success and then proceed from success to success, never ceasing the offensive against the enemy, taking advantage of his confusion, etc., etc.? To be successful, insurrection must rely not upon conspiracy and not upon a party, but upon the advanced class. That is the first point. Insurrection must rely upon a revolutionary upsurge of the people. That is the second point. Insurrection must rely upon that turning-point in the history of the growing revolution when the activity of the advanced ranks of the people is at its height, and when the vacillations in the ranks of the enemy and in the ranks of the weak, half-hearted and irresolute friends of the revolution are strongest. That is the third point. And these three conditions for raising the question of insurrection distinguish Marxism from Blanquism. Once these conditions exist, however, to refuse to treat insurrection as an art is a betrayal of Marxism and a betrayal of the revolution.¹

Many other passages in the text could be cited to this purpose. But it will be sufficient and useful to pause at this section because it has often been recalled as a refrain of the left communism of the 1920s, when what was known as the “theory of the offensive” was first confronted with the emergence of the Soviet bureaucratic party. That theory was rightly defeated,² not so much because of its adventurism or the inadequacy of the political project it sustained: these were inherently contradictory aspects, and thus precarious, open to criticism and modifications. What was not open to change and needed to be defeated was the irrationalist and nonmaterialist notion of the revolutionary process and of insurrection in particular. How could it be doubted that in Lenin’s position the concept of “insurrection as art” was completely dialectical in relation to the basic relationship between organization and composition? Let us return to the text we quoted: here Lenin founds the notion of insurrection on the dynamic relationship between the movement of organization and the revolutionary movement of the oppressed masses. Only by deepening this relation can the revolutionary moment explode; it does not do so by means of acts of will or idealist considerations! The inversion of the relation between composition and organization is a material and wholly determinate function. In order to succeed, the revolution must not base itself on a conspiracy or on a party (indeed!), but on the vanguard class: here the inversion of the relation between class composition and organizational process is given, as is its material form. The moment the working class reaches this level of realization of the revolutionary process, it has changed itself and its composition, as well as its relation to the party. The occurring inversion is an index, in Lenin, of a degree of uncertainty, which is immediately repressed and turned into theory, and which is felt when the continuity of the project faces this innovative power, the overall determinate invention of the revolutionary process of a class. Therefore, rather than insurrection as art, it is the materiality of the process of the masses and the class that wins!

Our theory is not a dogma, but a guide to action, said Marx and Engels; and it is the greatest mistake, the greatest crime on the part of such “patented” Marxists as Karl Kautsky, Otto Bauer, etc., that they have not understood this, have been unable to apply it at crucial moments of the proletarian revolution. Political activity is not the pavement of the Nevsky Prospect (the clean, broad, smooth pavement of the perfectly straight principal street of St. Petersburg)—N. G. Chernyshevsky, the great Russian Socialist of the pre-Marxian period, used to say. Since Chernyshevsky’s time Russian revolutionaries have paid the price of numerous sacrifices for ignoring or forgetting this truth. We must strive at all costs to prevent the Left Communists and the West-European and American revolutionaries who are devoted to the working class paying as dearly for the assimilation of this truth as the backward Russians did.³

The whole point now is that the Communists of every country should quite consciously take into account both the main fundamental tasks of the struggle against opportunism and “Left” doctrinarism and the specific features which this struggle assumes and inevitably must assume in each separate country in conformity with the peculiar features of its economics, politics, culture, national composition (Ireland, etc.), its colonies, religious divisions, and so on and so forth. Everywhere we can feel that dissatisfaction with the Second International is spreading and growing, both because of its opportunism and because of its inability, or incapacity, to create a really centralized, a really leading centre that would be capable of directing the international tactics of the revolutionary proletariat in its struggle for a world Soviet republic. We must clearly realize that such a leading centre cannot under any circumstances be built up on stereotyped, mechanically equalized and identical tactical rules of struggle. As long as national and state differences exist among peoples and countries—and these differences will continue to exist for a very long time even after the dictatorship of the proletariat has been established on a world scale—the unity of international tactics of the Communist working class movement of all countries demands, not the elimination of variety, not the abolition of national differences (that is a foolish dream at the present moment), but such an application of the fundamental principles of Communism (Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat) as will correctly modify these principles in certain particulars, correctly adapt and apply them to national and national-state differences. Investigate, study, seek, divine, grasp that which is peculiarly national, specifically national in the concrete manner in which each country approaches the fulfillment of the single international task, in which it approaches the victory over opportunism and “Left” doctrinarism within the working-class movement, the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, and the establishment of a Soviet republic and a proletarian dictatorship—such is the main task of the historical period through which all the advanced countries (and not only the advanced countries) are now passing. The main thing—not everything by a very long way, of course, but the main thing—has already been achieved in that the vanguard of the working class has been won over, in that it has ranged itself on the side of Soviet government against parliamentarism, on the side of the dictatorship of the proletariat against bourgeois democracy. Now all efforts, all attention, must be concentrated on the next step—which seems, and from a certain standpoint really is—less fundamental, but which, on the other hand, is actually closer to the practical carrying out of the task, namely: seeking the forms of transition or approach to the proletarian revolution. The proletarian vanguard has been won over ideologically. That is the main thing. Without this not even the first step towards victory can be made. But it is still a fairly long way from victory. Victory cannot be won with the vanguard alone. To throw the vanguard alone into the decisive battle, before the whole class, before the broad masses have taken up a position either of direct support of the vanguard, or at least of benevolent neutrality towards it, and one in which they cannot possibly support the enemy, would be not merely folly but a crime. And in order that actually the whole class, that actually the broad masses of the working people and those oppressed by capital may take up such a position, propaganda and agitation alone are not enough. For this the masses must have their own political experience. Such is the fundamental law of all great revolutions, now confirmed with astonishing force and vividness not only in Russia but also in Germany. Not only the uncultured, often illiterate, masses of Russia, but the highly cultured, entirely literate masses of Germany had to realize through their own painful experience the absolute impotence and spinelessness, the absolute helplessness and servility to the bourgeoisie, the utter vileness of the government of the knights of the Second International, the absolute inevitability of a dictatorship of the extreme reactionaries (Kornilov in Russia, Kapp and Co. in Germany) as the only alternative to a dictatorship of the proletariat, in order to turn them resolutely toward Communism.⁴

History generally, and the history of revolutions in particular, is always richer in content, more varied, more many sided, more lively and “subtle” than even the best parties and the most class-conscious vanguards of the most advanced classes imagine. This is understandable, because even the best vanguards express the class consciousness, will, passion and imagination of tens of thousands; whereas revolutions are made, at moments of particular upsurge and the exertion of all human capacities, by the class consciousness, will, passion and imagination of tens of millions, spurred on by a most acute struggle of classes. From this follow two very important practical conclusions: first, that in order to fulfil its task the revolutionary class must be able to master all forms, or aspects, of social activity without any exception (completing, after the capture of political power, sometimes at great risk and very great danger, what it did not complete before the capture of power); second, that the revolutionary class must be ready to pass from one form to another in the quickest and most unexpected manner. ⁵

This is a quotation from “Left-Wing” Communism, an Infantile Disorder, which is directly linked to the writings from 1905 on insurrection around the Third Congress of the Russian social democratic party, and is thus connected to the notion of a shift from legal to armed struggle, which is one of the main points of Lenin’s analysis of the situation that immediately followed 1905 and during the period of repression, and in other moments and situations Lenin theorizes its political contents. For instance, repression must only be faced with armed struggle, which would actualize the tools and processes of proletarian justice that attack where capital is no longer presented as development but as crisis and dysfunction. But Lenin’s political choice in the particular does not interest us: we are interested in the general, in the methodological proposal it contains. What interests us is, again, this ability to substitute one form of struggle with another, the ability to develop (from the side of the vanguard) a wide articulation of the adequate instruments within the tension proper to the revolutionary process, and the capacity to use Marxism as a method that can grasp all of the given alternatives: this is the innovative relevance of Lenin’s discourse.

Having said this, a last observation is needed. We have seen how Lenin is largely interested in the determinate form of organization, and could see this even more if we were to study Lenin as a party organizer.⁶ In this case, we could verify how Lenin’s discourse always finds its own determinate practical mediation in forms of organization that are, time and again, adequate to the revolutionary process, that are, so to speak, time and again chased, defined, led. Curiously, on this basis, Leninism has often been presented as a list of precepts, a sort of key to the solution to any problem (a false key, if it opens all doors). It has been presented, in other words, as formalism, in terms opposed to those we heard him speak. At the Third International, it was typical of the process of Bolshevization to try to impose a series of firm precepts on all parties that referred to themselves as part of the Bolshevik revolution; this might have been necessary, insofar as these firm points made it possible to discriminate between the authentic revolutionary forces and the forces that were not so or that, at least at the level of ideology, were trying to introduce a series of erroneous and backward positions inside the movement. In fact, this Bolshevization functioned as a formal kind of rigor and precepts that cut some vanguards off at the legs and made it impossible for them to make themselves adequate to the particular situations they were meant to intervene in. The extreme example is probably the vicissitude of the communist party in the United States of America, where an imposing force of communists coming from a formidable class experience like that of the IWW, with capable cadres and a very long experience of struggle, was castrated by the campaign for Bolshevization, by an incredibly slavish repetition of the model, which led, for instance, to the exclusion of African-American members from the organization (in the name of a politics of nationality that repeated something that might have been valid in Russia, even though in the United States class unity was given and blacks and whites worked on the same assembly line).⁷ Well, all of this comes from the formalistic use of Leninism as a set of precepts. Ours is not a recrimination among intellectuals. In fact, this absurd formalism functioned as a material force, castrating effective revolutionary powers, eliminating their chance to express themselves and interpret the class needs of more advanced degrees of capitalist development. This is no recrimination: it is another indication of method, but this time, a wholly Leninist one. First comes mass practice, everything else follows. Theory either is verified in the practices of the masses or does not exist. There is no fetish we sacrifice to, even if it is called Lenin. Lenin is useful, essential, and fundamental: but he lives in the history of the workers’ movement only insofar as he corresponds to the needs and practices of the masses. This is Leninism.

And perhaps the concept of insurrection as art—this ambiguous limit of privileging, on the one hand, the party (even against the party if necessary) and, on the other hand, the activity and practice of the masses—indicates this to us. It shows that in Lenin there is never a moment when all the real contents of the practice of the masses and of the needs of the proletariat are mechanically subordinated to the demands of the party: the opposite is always the case. The Leninist party manages to melt with the masses and determine thus the inversion of the relation between composition and organization only at times: beyond these times, there is no illusion that the fusion will happen, but there is an awareness of the tendency and the limits of the action of the party. The party is necessary but not sufficient: what is both necessary and sufficient is the revolutionary practice of the masses. If we keep these elements in mind—on the one hand, the relation between the theory of class composition, strategy, and organization in the process that moves from the determination of the situation to the organization of the party, and on the other hand, the possibility of inverting this relation in the practice of the masses, in the emergence of the most acute revolutionary contents—we can determine the permanence of the Leninist method as an organic experience of the movement, as an element of the political composition of the working class that cannot be destroyed today. In Lenin, the transition to the highest stage of the recomposition of the proletariat is experienced as a hope, a project, and a risk. The ambiguity deriving from this is often heavy. But if we assume as an index of this ambiguity the couple “insurrection as art–practice of the masses,” we can have no doubts about the meaning of Lenin’s tremendous solution.